


Can't Erase, So I'll Take Blame...

by Dividedpoet



Series: Without You [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Character Death Fix, Coulson Lives, Cultural References, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, References to Suicide, Romance, mentioned PTSD, possible WIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 14:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dividedpoet/pseuds/Dividedpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To say Tony Stark wasn't the best at delivering possible good news was significantly more than an understatement. Regardless, Clint agreed to crawl into that vent of his own free will. Anything for the possibility of a warm Phil back in his bed, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Erase, So I'll Take Blame...

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Okay, a couple notes I wanted to include before anybody dove into this story. 
> 
> For starters, I haven’t written a piece of fan fiction in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I write often. It’s not like it’s been years since I’ve put ink to paper. But, this is definitely my first story in ages and my only Avengers fan fiction to date. 
> 
> It is an un-beta’d (I’m not sure how you find one of those these days so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it) but repeatedly re-written and edited story that I am proud of, whether that is warranted or not. I do truly hope that it is enjoyed as I have very much enjoyed writing it.
> 
> The title comes from “Without You” by David Guetta feat. Usher
> 
> Thank you for your time and on with my first real departure from PWP…

It took them 3 days to tell him Coulson was dead. 

3 days of psychiatric evaluations. 

3 days of getting visits from magicians and witches. 

3 days of being poked and prodded by SHIELD medical. 

3 days of thinking that, yeah, he had a fuck ton of amends to make but ultimately everything was gonna be okay because he knew his lover would be there to help him through it. 

“What the fuck do you mean he’s dead?” Clint boomed at the junior agent that told him, eyes frozen wide. The words were automatic, not a reaction so much as a product of disbelief. However, when the poor agent began hurriedly explaining it to him the blood rushing in his ears grew too loud and he immediately started weighing out how he was going to break his contract. Would he just start killing agents in the hallway? That letter opener could do quite a bit of damage. Was he going to take a swan dive off of Stark Tower? Tony would probably appreciate the irony of Hawkeye plummeting to his death… 

But then there was Nat plunging a syringe into his neck with the swiftness and skill that only she possessed after years of watching him react and what those different reactions meant. He was grateful for the darkness; it staved off the real weight of the situation for a few hours. 

Natasha told him later that the psych department had given him a month, citing that as the adequate amount of time for a grief of the magnitude he was experiencing. They also said he was on suicide watch for the first week. 

He didn’t know what he would have done during the battle if they’d told him. He can’t imagine he would have been very helpful. As it was, in his new favorite fetal position with his nose buried in one of Coulson’s ever professional button downs, Clint was having a hard time thinking about much of anything. 

It didn’t matter; in just a few days they’d have him back on the carrier being evaluated by psych even further before they threw him into the field. He guessed that was what happened when you lost someone in SHIELD while you were under contract; they just expected you to pick up and move on. They weren’t exactly sentimental. 

Distantly he heard his phone going off. He knew it was Natasha. She’d been coming by every day for the last three weeks; bringing him food, making sure he showered, making sure he made it to his few and far between SHIELD appointments, attempting to get him to talk, occasionally drugging him…he had to admit, that last part was his favorite.

If he’d been in his right mind, he would have caught onto how pointed her questions were. How they obviously had ulterior motives; “Have you been on the helicarrier since it happened?” “Did they show you the autopsy? For Christ’s sake, he was your lover.” “Don’t you think you have the right to say goodbye?” She was asking all the right questions, as Natasha tended to do, hoping he would grab at them. But he maintained that he didn’t have the strength. He wasn’t about to give himself even a semblance of hope.

That decision held firm until the day his mourning was interrupted by a flippant, “Up and at ‘em, weep ‘n wallow. We’ve got sights to see.” 

Tony’s voice had a knack for drawing a groan from even the most lifeless of folk. He walked into Clint’s line of sight, eyebrows thoughtfully arched. “I’ve always wanted to hack the helicarrier’s medical bay.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Tony?” Clint huffed into the shirt he was curled around, annoyed and unsurprisingly lacking any semblance of social skills.

He let his lids slide closed, but in his mind he could see Tony’s eyes rolling upward. 

“I’m talking about finding your Jack Twist.” Tony paused for dramatic effect. “I don’t think he’s dead.” Clint’s eyes popped back open and Tony seemed to take that as a cue to continue. “Jarvis got me full access to the helicarrier’s personnel files as well as the ship’s manifest; everyone who has ever gone on or off the ship, when they’ve done it, and what their intended destination was when they left…Coulson’s file hasn’t been closed, he hasn’t been marked deceased,” Tony actually had the decency to sound almost apologetic when he said this next part, “and his body was never taken off the ship.”

Clint stilled completely as his mind began to run through the possibilities Stark was opening up. When those thoughts shifted to dark places Clint shook his head. “Your info must be out of date, Stark. You’re wrong.” Because if Tony was right about Phil’s personnel file and the ship logs, that either meant that his corpse was somewhere on that creepy ass boat, frozen in wait; or it possibly meant that Fury had lied and Coulson was laying hooked up to machines somewhere in medical, practically a vegetable.

“Plucked from under Fury’s nose just yesterday,” Tony said, voice dripping with certainty. “Facts are facts, bird brain, and the facts point to SHIELD either holding him hostage on the helicarrier or possibly delving into the wonderful science of animating corpses. It’s really a tossup. Let’s go look, shall we?” he said, becoming more persistent as he spoke.

Clint didn’t move. “How long have you been looking into this?” No way in hell did this start yesterday; no way Stark hadn’t been working on this theory since Fury called the time of death. 

“Started working on code for the hack as soon as we left the debriefing.”

That had Clint sitting up. “Why didn’t I know about this?” he barked, voice still showing hints of disuse.

Tony’s tongue darted over his lips. “Agent Romanov informed me that if I told you before she deemed you ready or the situation stable I would find myself missing not only my arch reactor but my kneecaps as well.” Clint did not doubt for a second that Natasha threatened exactly that.

“She thinks I’m ready? That the situation is stable?” he asked, words measured out as he fixed his eyes on the floor.

“That she does.”

He must still have had some life left in him, some trust, because with those three words Clint was pushing himself to stand, bones creaking in protest. “What do you need me to  
do?” 

Tony’s face lit up in the manner it always did when things were about to go his way. “I just need you to take a short trip through the vents.”

\---

“A short trip through the vents my fucking ass,” Clint muttered as he army crawled his way along a particularly narrow duct. He knew these vents like the back of his hand, even if he hadn't been in them for a while; in the past he'd spent a lot of his time sneaking around in them…among other places on the carrier. But, he could not for the life of him picture the box Tony was trying to describe.

“Will you stop squawking and just keep looking? Jesus, you’d think I wasn’t attempting to resurrect the love of your life,” Tony said with an embellished sigh.

“Watch it, Stark.” 

The lack of bite had probably translated down the wire because there was a moment of silence followed by an almost genuine sounding, “Right. Sorry.” 

That’s when Clint saw it, like a beacon of light in the darkness; a black box with wires of every color running off of it before tapering down into two grey tubes that led in opposite directs down either end of the duct he was in. “I found it. What now?”

“Put the strip on the black wire and get the fuck out.” 

Right, they’d talked about that. Tony had given Clint a little magnetic strip that, half an hour after being attached, would short out and reroute all of the locks in the helicarrier. Clint didn’t know how it worked but Tony was very insistent when he’d told him that he had ten minutes before the helicarrier would quietly begin going into lock down and he would be trapped in the vents. The ship’s default would be to lock in the crew and lock out the rest of the world, which was fine because the internal doors would then be accessible to Tony and whatever near-magical gadgetry he was wielding. He claimed it would take the crew a couple of hours before they realized that Level 7 access had been given to a new party. By then Clint and Natasha would have been well inside the medical bay, moving like the ghosts they were trained to be.

“Righto,” Clint said as he ripped the backing off of the little magnetic strip and wrapped it around the briefly exposed black wire. Then he was silently scrambling through the vents. He was out and back inside the personnel barracks in 3 minutes. 

“Well done,” Tony said in his ear. “Meet us on the bridge in 15.” There was a little click and Clint knew Tony had disconnected the transmitter linked up to his ear piece. 

Stark was being surprisingly helpful in all of this. Clint wasn’t about to kid himself and think Tony was doing this for him. No, he had too little faith in Fury and too long a history of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. But somewhere between Tony saying Phil might be alive and Clint crawling into the first vent, he had begun to lean on the idea that maybe Phil really was still on that boat. Tony could have whatever motives he wanted if it meant that Clint got to see Phil one last time.

“Explain it to me.” 

The words would have startled Clint if he hadn’t already heard the footsteps behind him. He paused with his hand on the exit and thought for a moment before turning to face Steve, standing there in all of his khaki-wearing-button-down glory.

“What exactly do you need me to explain, Cap’n?” Clint asked, looking Steve directly in the eyes. He saw the guilt there, guilt that only Captain America would carry. Guilt that said, ‘I should have told you before they did, before they took you away. I’m so sorry.’

“Why don’t you explain why you think Fury is hiding Coulson and while you’re at it, why Tony’s been lying to me.” Clint’s eyebrows went up and Steve shifted slightly, looking uncomfortable. “I’ve been watching Tony for the last month; sliding Stark Tech over floor plans, setting coffee cups on very thin looking master controllers, telling me he’s going to lunch with Pepper when I know they’re not speaking,” there was more guilt there then Clint was willing to delve into in his current mental state, but if everything turned out well he’d prod at that later. “I just need you to explain to me why I shouldn’t go to Fury. What’s going on?”

Clint glanced at his watch. He had ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Tony and Nat on the bridge and 22 minutes before the entire ship went into lock down. He didn’t have time to argue and he wasn’t actually positive that it would be faster to try and take Steve down…

“What if I told you there was some kind of conspiracy going on?” The words were out of Clint’s mouth before he really registered them, mind too swept up in keeping a portion of his attention on the ticking seconds of his wristwatch. “What if I told you there was the chance that a man who supposedly died, a good and wonderful man, didn’t die at all?”

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed and Clint watched as he clearly halted a shake of his head. “That doesn’t make any sense…” he began.

Clint cut him off. “A lot of things don’t make any sense, Cap’n,” he said quickly. “Coulson’s personnel files never being updated, that doesn’t make any sense. His body never being transferred off the ship for a burial, that doesn’t make any sense. Fury showing you Coulson’s prized fucking possessions after he’d taken them from his locker and smeared them in his blood, that doesn’t make any goddamn sense.” Clint was a spy; he knew how to control the volume of his voice in a high pressure situation. But, that didn’t change the way his words steadily filled with intensity, with anger. “Being ripped away from the man I love the day I ask him to marry me,” Clint said finally after a few moment’s pause. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

It didn’t take Steve more than a minute to process everything Clint had just thrown at him and go back to wanting more information. “What are you trying to do?”

“Tony has some gizmo; some shiny Stark tech that’ll pull back the bolts on all the doors in this place. He says we can get into the medical bay, pull Coulson’s files, and get out. Easy as a lion.”

Steve still looked skeptical and Clint grunted in relent, pulling his reserved card. “If it was him, wouldn’t you look?”

Clint had lost track of the seconds, but with a quick glance at his watch he could see it was now 4 minutes past when he was supposed to be on the bridge.

Steve ran a hand over his face before he gave a single nod. “Why do the right things always get me in trouble?” he muttered to himself before reaching past Clint to push open the door that led to the hallway outside the bridge.

When they arrived Tony looked up from some weapons blue prints he had spread over the big conference table, eyes betraying confusion at seeing Steve next to Clint. “You know, the only person that’s allowed to be late to my meetings is me,” he said, sounding vaguely absentminded before looking back down at his blue prints. “I have some new tech for you to try.” Oh right, Clint had smashed his bow during a particularly bad night about a week and a half ago. That was their cover for being on the ship; to use the range.

“You said that on the phone and then Nat chose to revisit our time in the Czech Republic,” he directed some pretty dark eyes over at Natasha. “Can we get this over with?” He could do sullen and angry; he was a champ at that shit.

“Pushy, pushy,” Tony sighed, eyebrows raised. But he stood up straight and sauntered over to a black case. “Let’s go.” 

The door to the range was conveniently just a few doors down from the medical bay. Clint didn’t think it was a coincidence; people had a habit of being accidentally/not-so-accidentally maimed on the range. They had 7 minutes before the alarms started to go off and the doors became accessible. 

They waited.

\---

“Do you think they figured us out or are we just that lucky?” Clint asked Natasha when the alarms stopped sounding about 5 minutes after their entrance into the medical bay. 

They’d left Tony and Steve behind to keep an eye out, maybe they’d been seen.

“Crew thinks it was a glitch in the system,” Natasha answered distractedly from her spot in front of one of the med bay computers. She’d always been a better hacker than Clint. “There’s a feed uplink somewhere on this floor, but our presence doesn’t seem to be drawing any attention.” She glanced over at Clint and shrugged, “If someone knows we’re here, they don’t really seem to care.” 

Clint paced back over and looked at the computer Natasha was working with. He didn’t know how she’d done it but it looked as if Natasha had pulled up the security alert feed, the medical bay logs, and the floor schedules all in the last 4 minutes (it had taken her 30 seconds to reach the computer and 30 seconds to break their passwords). “Everything on this floor is local,” she began without any additional prompting. “The reason Stark couldn’t find any info on Coulson’s treatment was because the computers here don’t link to any others on the carrier.” Nat intercepted Clint’s question before he could ask, as per usual, “The security feed is linked through here, but not any even remotely accessible wireless signals can penetrate those doors. That’s why even Stark had to have you crawl into the vents and set a bug up directly.”

Clint automatically looked back to where they’d come in. “Well that’s damn fancy,” he muttered. 

“The logs list Coulson’s last room move to 716.” Natasha looked over her shoulder. “It should be down that hallway and to the right. The nurses for this floor are on lunch. We have 20 minutes before they come back and start making rounds.”

Clint didn’t even look at Natasha before he took off down the hall. She’d make sure no one made it in through the front door; she always had his back.

He only had to turn the one corner before he saw room 716 standing out at the end of the hall. His gait didn’t slow in his approach. In retrospect, he wished he’d taken a moment to prepare himself for the possibility…

Clint only vaguely registered the spring-loaded door closing behind him, his eyes too fixed on the doors of the morgue drawers. There had been no outside indicator. No sign, nothing in the notes in the file. He guessed everyone that worked on the floor knew what this room was, they didn’t need a reminder. 

He began to feel a familiar prickling sensation at the back of his eyes and he wondered how long it had been since he’d cried. Clint remembered a few days in the beginning, after waking up in Natasha’s safe house. He remembered a few nights of his timeless partner in crime and fellow secret agent holding him as tightly as she could as he shook. This was going to be worse.

Clint wouldn’t say he crumbled to the floor; no, Clint was a secret agent. Secret agents like Clint did everything with skill and poise…no, wait, again, that was Natasha. Yup, Clint definitely crumbled, body unable to hold him up when the tremors came; they were less brought on by sobs and more a reminder that he had some pretty fucked up PTSD to add to his already heavy mental and emotional bag.

He’d wanted this so bad, to walk in and see Coulson lying there hooked up to tubes but _alive_. Clint had put everything he had into that desire. But here he was, on his knees in this cold lifeless room, all hope ripped away one more time. It was essentially a Tuesday in the life of a SHIELD agent, but it was harder for Clint to hold up that burden this time.

Arms came around him from behind and for just a moment he thought Natasha had followed him into the room. A second’s consideration made it clear it wasn’t Natasha; the arms were too thick for that. 

“Oh baby,” the person holding him whispered against the back of his head. 

Clint started shaking even harder, tears beginning to come thick and heavy as soon as he realized who it was; he had to be having a mental breakdown. “I can’t do this,” he burst out, ignoring the probability that he was talking to a figment of his imagination and trying to keep the tremors from translating to his voice. “I can’t do this. I can’t—you’re everything that makes sense to me, you’re the only thing that does. I love you so much--” Clint registered the crazy urgency in his voice and he couldn’t deny that he felt like he was trying to plead with a ghost. 

“You’re so much stronger than you think you are,” it said, a perfect duplicate of the tone Phil had been using on him for the last 5 years. “So much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

Clint shook his head carefully, not wanting to dislodge the lips he swore he could feel against his scalp. “Please don’t leave me, please.” 

It wasn’t really like any breakdown Clint had experienced in the past. Everything he felt was sharp and completely focused. He had been in many a one-star prison cell, deprived of all the essential life-keeping goodies. Losing your mind didn’t feel like this, it didn’t feel this real.

When the figment began muttering its next words, Clint immediately found himself doubting he was losing his mind at all. He actually started to feel like maybe Tony had been right. Jesus fucking Christ.

It said them over and over—he, he said them over and over, “I’m so sorry” and “I didn’t know”. The words sounded as heartfelt and mangled as Clint’s brain felt and he began to notice things; like breath on the back of his neck, the press of a thumb on his clavicle, a hand stroking down his side just the way he liked. His entire body relaxed into Phil’s embrace as his typically quicker brain caught up to what was going on. 

“God, I missed you,” he sighed.

\---

Coulson had been out of medical for approximately a week. They’d told him he couldn’t leave the ship because of the severity of his injury; they wanted to be able to keep a constant eye on him and he wanted to be able to put his suit back on, this was their compromise.

“Director, I have a question about the special ops team in Lisbon,” Coulson began as he walked into Fury’s office. He was, however, distracted as his gaze drifted to where Fury was staring intently at the image of his lover moving across the large flat screen mounted on the wall. “Um, sir, may I ask what Agent Barton is doing on the secret news feed you, evidently, have set up in…” he trailed off as he took a closer look. “What appears to be the medical bay on this very ship?” 

Fury barely spared Coulson a glance. “Stark got him in. He’s trying to find you,” he said, as if completely disinterested.

Coulson let out a slow breath, heart rate beginning to climb. “Why is he looking for me in the medical bay of the helicarrier and not saving orphans in Guyana like you’d informed me he’d been sent to do?” he asked.

Fury shrugged and continued looking down at his paper work. “Pretty sure I didn’t tell you he was saving orphans, Agent.”

Coulson felt his jaw lock in place as the muscles tightened. “Director Fury,” was all he said, but his tone was firm and no-nonsense. 

Fury glanced back up at Coulson but maintained the appearance of split attention. “He’s probably here to try and uncover the great mystery that is my letting the Avengers think you’re dead.”

Coulson stopped moving completely. He couldn’t actually muster up words for a good 30 seconds, his brain trying to list every reason that Director Fury would fabricate his demise. “They think I’m dead? They--” He paused. “Is that why you told me Agent Barton was on assignment in Guyana; so you could hold up your hoax a little longer?”

Fury sighed and smacked his pen down on the desk. “Well it wasn’t a hoax at the time, Agent. At the time of my informing them of your death I’d just watched you go eyes wide with a sucking chest wound. It didn’t really look hopeful.” Fury arched his eyebrow, “Then when you flat lined three days later, I made the decision that it wasn’t the best to get anyone’s hopes up until you were stable.” 

“Director, I have been perfectly stable for getting close to four weeks now.” He was fighting to maintain that cool demeanor, but it was obviously fraying at the edges.

“Look,” Fury said, folding his hands in front of himself, body language clearly indicating that he felt as if he were about to impart some hard truth. “You changed things for them. You said it yourself, they needed something to fight for and you were a totem for that something; a reminder that bad guys did bad things and they needed to band together. I didn’t want to ruin that for them, I wanted them to become a stable entity on their own before I told them the truth.”

Coulson heard him, he did, and he could almost wrap his brain around the logic…or at least he would have been able to about 40 days ago. It was the job; both Phil and Clint knew what the job entailed. However, now he was having some issues. A key one being, “You told my fiancé, whom at the time was recovering from an already horrific trauma, that I was dead.” He wasn’t asking a question, he was stating a fact. “Then, when I stabilized, you continued to lie to him as well as myself.”

Fury rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling then back at Coulson. “Yes.”

Nick saw the fist coming toward him, probably before Phil even knew what he was doing. He couldn’t have moved; Phil was one of the few that from time to time had the ability to catch him off guard. But he absolutely could have shifted and lessened the blow. He didn’t. Even Nick, the guy that fabricated this horrible story, understood what he deserved. It was a free one. He owed Phil a free one. 

Before he’d even reseated himself Phil was out the door. When Nick looked over at the screen on his wall, he could almost see why Phil hadn’t paused to wait on him. Clint had just found the morgue.

\---

Phil flew down the corridors, intent on finding Clint and telling him he was okay, that he was alive. 

What he found was Clint shaking on the floor. He didn’t think he’d ever experienced anything more heartbreaking…and then Clint began to speak.

The words were pleading and hurried; almost as if he was trying to bargain before he ran out of time. 

He didn’t think Phil was real, so needless to say Phil was surprised when he felt Clint’s body relax against his own. He didn’t know what he’d said or what he’d done, but whatever it was he was very grateful for it.

Phil gave himself a moment; felt the press of Clint’s body in his arms again, re-acclimated himself with the scent of Clint’s hair. But then he began to pull away, shift backward. Clint registered the shift immediately and spun around, eyes full of panic. Phil shook his head and pressed their foreheads together, taking a deep breath and attempting to detach himself in order to maintain a level head. 

“It is imperative that you and Tasha leave very quickly without anyone else seeing you. Director Fury and I are the only ones that currently know of you entering the med bay without authorized clearance.” Coulson (Coulson now, not Phil) took a deep, calming breath. “Director Fury, while having clearly made some incredibly poor choices recently, now at the very least owes me one ‘keep my fiancé jail free’ card. He will not report you. The issue is if the nurses come back and see you, if anyone does, and they report it to the council I will not be able to control your punishment. And there would be severe punishment.” He paused again, his tone thoughtful. “I’d prefer not to have to spend the rest of my life hiding you from SHIELD. You may have noticed we can be pests with our ability to find people.”

Clint was already standing up and heading for the door. He knew that tone; that was Coulson’s patented, ‘I’ve saved your life a million times just shut up and do as I say you idiot’ tone. He seemed to understand. Before Clint could slip back out the door, though, Coulson put his hands on either side of Clint’s face and suddenly he was Phil again. “I will be home tonight and we will make this better.” The words were earnest, full of promise.

Coulson would get Fury to give him medical clearance and he would go home to his fiancé, this was not going to be a discussion. “Go.”

\---

Clint went. He didn’t want to, he really didn’t want to. But the fact of the matter was, he trusted Phil. He also trusted that not being _reprimanded_ by the council was better for all of their well beings. 

On the way back toward the doors that would lead him to more legal parts of the helicarrier, Clint beckoned to Natasha. “We need to go.”

She stood quickly, never one to hesitate when she detected urgency, but as they moved she still asked, “Is he…?”

“Alive and kicking but we need to get out of here,” Clint said, still sparing glances back down the hallway. If Natasha hadn’t seen Coulson that meant that he had entered the bay from a different door which probably meant that Stark and Rogers hadn’t seen him either. God he hoped Phil was real and not just some demented trick his mind was playing on him. “Coulson said if we’re caught in an unauthorized part of the helicarrier he won’t be able to control how the council deals with us,” he added, knowing that Natasha would immediately understand.

Natasha didn’t question him any further; he would fill her in on any pertinent details she hadn’t already gathered for herself when this was all over. They moved swiftly toward the doors and Natasha immediately headed for a little key pad to the side of them. Entering the code, the doors slid open and the two assassins where greeted with the overly innocent faces of Steve and Tony. 

Steve’s was the first to shift from almost shame to concern. “What happened?”

“We need to leave,” both Clint and Natasha said at once.

Tony shook his head and pointed through the door. “What? No! What happened in there?”

“One: Coulson lives. Two: Basically, we get out of here now or the council deems us national security risks and we probably get put in cages and studied for the rest of our lives.”

Tony pondered this for a moment. “Getting myself out of that, what are my odds?”

Natasha, Steve, and Clint all shared a look. “It’s SHIELD. Is it really worth it?” Natasha asked, one perfectly shaped eyebrow arched and eyes clearly screaming, ‘Fucking idiot.’

“You make a fantastic point.” Tony nodded in the direction of the observation deck and flight pad. “Shall we?”

\---

Clint had been silent on the ride back into the city and of course Natasha hadn’t badgered him. They got the information she was interested in, everything else was free for speculation. Natasha didn’t speculate, she dealt in facts. She’d ask Clint what happened only after she knew he had all the facts.

She’d left as soon as he’d reached his building and at the time Clint had been grateful, but now he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t sit still, not at all. He would sit down then stand up, walk to the bedroom then decide he wanted something out of the kitchen, turn on the television then decide he’d rather listen to the radio. This went on for two hours, the whole time his brain a constant loop of ‘what if’s. He wanted to go to the range, let lose a couple hundred arrows or so, work out this nervous energy. But he couldn’t. What if he wasn’t there when Coulson got back? What if Coulson thought he went to his old apartment and they ended up missing each other? Yeah, too many, best to stay put.

The pathetic mental ramblings were cut off when he heard the creak of the front door. At the sound, Clint made his way back into the living room and there he was, Phil Coulson in the flesh, taking off his jacket and setting down his briefcase. Now, in the light of their shared apartment faced with almost definite reality, Clint found himself holding back.

When Phil finally turned to Clint he could see some obvious exhaustion in the other man’s eyes. But Phil had some holes to fill, as did Clint to a certain extent, and both knew that couldn’t be put on hold.

Phil began before his backside even hit the cushions of their couch. He chose to leave out the surgery procedures, the close calls, and the flat lines. In all fairness, he didn’t have any personal memories of those days. Everything he knew about his managing to survive was told to him by third parties. Instead, he focused on what happened once he’d woken up.

“The first few days were fuzzy, to say the least; a blur of morphine and chest pains I only partially understood,” Phil began, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and fold his hands in front of him. “Director Fury was the first person I remember seeing, other than vague recollections of nurses and doctors assigned to my case. He informed me that we had won the Battle for Manhattan. Additionally, he informed me that you had been brought in by Natasha, that you were safe.” He paused to clear his throat; attention splitting as he re-memorized everything about the way Clint moved to settle himself next to Phil on the couch. “When I asked for you the Director said that you’d been needed on an op in Guyana. He told me that he wouldn’t have sent you if it wasn’t of the utmost importance. Moreover, he ‘pointed out’,” there was some of that extra dry sarcasm Phil was so good at, “That you wouldn’t have agreed to leave my side if you didn’t feel you were absolutely needed.” Phil snorted. “And I believed him. Son of a bitch,” he muttered, more to himself.

Phil saw Clint shift out of the corner of his eye and he quickly went on. “After I’d recovered to an adequate degree, in my opinion, I began badgering Fury to let me go back to my work. It had been nearly 3 weeks at that point since I’d become stable yet the most I’d gotten out of him was his bringing a subset of my backed up paperwork into the medical bay so I could at least get some of it done. I was tired of lying down; worrying about you and not doing anything productive. I needed to start moving again. So he agreed to med bay release under the condition that I didn’t leave the helicarrier.” Phil shrugged. “You weren’t home as far as I knew, I had nothing to come back to for the time being, so I figured why the hell not.” 

“It wasn’t until I saw you on the security feed in the Director’s office that I even had an inkling things weren’t as I’d been told. I recognize I should have known; the Director is always up to something. But he gave me day by day updates on your team’s mission status, or what I believed to be your team’s mission status.”

“What happened on the 3rd day?” Clint asked abruptly, eyes fixed on the floor. 

If Phil had been anyone else, he would have flinched. Hell, if Clint had been anyone else, Phil might have been surprised at his ability to put 2 and 2 together. 

“On my third day out from the incident, after almost two days of being stable, I flat lined. Apparently they’d missed something and I’d started bleeding profusely during the night,” he answered quietly.

Clint nodded slowly; appearing dazed as he processed the information he’d just been given. 

“It took them three days to tell me that you were dead. Guess they told me after you flat lined,” Clint said, thoughtful but in that, ‘I don’t want you to see how bothered I am’ way that he was so good at.

He scratched the back of his head and let his eyes dart around the room, checking corners and exits; it was a subtle tell when Clint was going to reveal something private about himself to someone he wasn’t sure about. 

Oh shit. This was going to be a problem.

Even with that thought in mind, Phil managed to keep his mouth shut. It took all of his training, but so help him, he didn’t let an ounce of doubt show on his face.

“Natasha put me under after they gave me the news. Probably a good move on her part considering I’d started seriously sifting through my ‘exit strategies’.” Clint had to clear his throat before he said the words, ‘Exit strategies’.

A tight, sluggish feeling began to build in Phil’s chest and only became worse as Clint spoke. 

“They had Nat assigned to take watch for the first week of my month long leave. I mostly spent my time sleeping off the sedatives she’d slip me and experiencing some pretty fantastic dreamless nights.” He paused in thought, “She’d definitely be one of those mothers that slipped vodka into the baby bottle, ‘specially considering the Russian thing.” 

Phil chuckled, but it was distracted. He imagined Clint picked up on it because he quickly continued, “They had me go in a few times; test new tech, some psych evals, a couple training courses I guess to make sure I’d stayed in spying shape. I don’t know. I didn’t really do much of anything.” _Like eat_ , thought Phil, having easily registered that Clint had gotten thinner in the past month. He still looked healthy, but his muscle tone had gone down noticeably. “Today was the first time I’d gotten out of bed without Natasha threatening me with bodily harm and even then I only did it to placate her; I didn’t care if she hurt me.” Clint shook his head as if just realizing what he’d implied. “Wait, that wasn’t--fucking Jesus Christ.” He leaned his head closer to his knees and pulled his fingers through his hair. “Fucking goddammit!” he yelled.

Phil’s eyes widened but otherwise he remained still as Clint reacted, tone an odd mixture of frustrated and word-vomity. “I don’t—I’m not mad at you, I’m not. I swear to fucking _God_ in _heaven_ , I am not mad at you. But I’d just had my brain turned into play dough and killed half the agents in my division and when they told me you died somewhere in all of that, that I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to you because of the _mind control_ …Jesus fuck that hurt like a bitch. And I mourned you in my very weird, circus act, drama queen kind of way.” Clint grunted. “I’m having a hard time getting past the idea that I might have to go through that again.”

Phil had begun to reach his hand out to Clint, but he paused at Clint’s last words. Luckily, before Phil could withdraw his hand, Clint grabbed it as if he’d been watching it the whole time. “I’m not backing out, and I’m not saying I can’t do this anymore,” Clint pulled Phil toward him a bit and leaned in, “And I don’t take _it_ back,” he said from under strategically bashful lashes. He looked down again and sighed, “I’m just saying I’ve had enough therapists to know I’ll be waiting for the bottom to fall out and you’re going to have to get passed that with me.”

After a few moments he looked up at Phil expectantly and the other man’s eyes were incredulous. “Agent Barton, I do believe I don’t need to remind you how long I’m willing to wait where you’re concerned.”

Clint smile. Yeah, he remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Okay, I was thinking of trying to do a couple different stories in this universe. You know, the standard ones, like how they got together and things of that nature. Also, I think I definitely want to write one explaining what Phil meant when he said that Clint should know he was willing to wait a long time. Oh, and obviously I’d want to write one about where they go from here. I have to be honest, I’ve always been a PWP writer, so I definitely need to get some of that in too. ;)
> 
> I don’t know, just something I’m toying with. This is definitely my first fan fiction writing endeavor in years and I’m more than a little nervous about it.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I really hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
